1. The best and most comprehensive discussion of Marx’s notion of critique can be found in E. Renault, Marx et l’idée de critique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1995); for a short version see his ‘La modalité critique chez Marx’, Revue Philosophique, 124/2, 1999, 181–198.
2. J. Habermas, ‘Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique’, in Theory and Practice (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1973), 238.
3. R. C. Tucker (ed.), The Marx — Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), 15 (translation modified) (hereafter MER);
4. K. Marx and F. Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz, 1956–1990), Vol. 1, 346 (hereafter MEW). Several caveats are in place: the reliance on the early Marx’s methodological self-understanding as against the objectivist and positivist tendencies of some of his later works stands in need of further justification — here I can only acknowledge it, together with the almost complete bracketing of Marx’s critique of political economy as elaborated in Capital. Consequently, this chapter can only provide a partial view, not only of Marx’s theory, but also of the understanding of critique it involves. Furthermore, neither the relation between Marx’s theory and his own political engagement in the workers’ movement nor his influence on ‘actually existing socialism’ — both questions of considerable historical, but less of philosophical interest — will be discussed.
5. K. Marx and F. Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1975), Vol. 4, 93 / MEW, Vol. 2, 98. As the famous statement from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte goes, ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past’ (MER 595 / MEW, Vol. 8, 115). In another passage (MER 578 / MEW, Vol. 12, 4), these two aspects are concisely linked: ‘History is the judge — its executioner, the proletarian.’